<p>Got a great piece of news today. My son has been taking a class at a satellite campus of PSU and it was not inexpensive. We were paying it off in payments and today I went in to pay the last 1/3 - $500+. Imagine my reaction when one of the ladies in the financial services casually said, “Wait, he’s a HS student? Then he should be getting the discounted tuition.” They owe us money!!</p>
<p>well that will come in handy for the holidays, kathie!!!</p>
<p>Amazing what a piece of good news can do! ds got accepted to St Louis University today, they left a voice mail message on his cell while he was on the ice at practice. Now this was the univ I forced him to apply to because I thought it would be a good fit…so since I won’t say it to him…I told you so! and he received an auto scholarship for attending a Jesuit High School, drop in bucket of their $35k tuition but maybe more is coming? </p>
<p>He was also selected to write the senior reflection for hockey for his school’s winter sports program and did a great job on it.</p>
<p>Whew! Thanks again for all your support!</p>
<p>ddd928 - congrats to your S. Fingers crossed you see more merit money</p>
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<p>Wow, instead writing a check, you get one. How nice is that?</p>
<p>ddd928, congrats on S’s SLU acceptance! </p>
<p>Look at some FA stats on Princeton Review, CollegeBoard, Collegedata, see if you can get a sense of their aid! </p>
<p>kathiep, it is always nice to find money, eh?</p>
<p>Son got his ED decision today - Accepted. He will be a freshman at Syracuse in the fall. So thrilled!</p>
<p>Congrats on the SLU acceptance ddd928! Excellent news AparentalUnit! Another two DONE!!</p>
<p>Congrats AParental!! : what school at SU?</p>
<p>Arts and Sciences - Undecided.</p>
<p>Congrats to your S APU! Hope he has 4 wonderful years there.</p>
<p>Congrats ddd and apu!!</p>
<p>Thanks for all the congrats…where is that darn application packet with all the info now?<br>
A big hooray to APU and…</p>
<p>Thanks to SLUMOM for the Fin Aid suggestions…I did find on their website that additional scholarships are awarded for as low as a 2.5 GPA so definitely keeping the fingers crossed. DS is actually excited about visiting SLU after hockey season is over, which will hopefully be later, rather than sooner, so weather is milder.</p>
<p>Congrats, people! As with last year, it’s a wonderful thing to hear so many happy results from parents who a year or two ago really wondered if things would work out for their kids. </p>
<p>D got an acceptance yesterday to University of Minnesota - a great school, with the programs she wants, and very affordable. Count me in among parents who say to find a school like that and apply as early as you can. She feels really good about it. But we have 12 more schools to hear from, and a very unpredictable road with the theatre auditions, so the journey is just starting.</p>
<p>Interestingly, her best GF also got accepted there yesterday. They compare conversely - friend has a 4.0 but below 30 ACT; D has a 3.X (depends on how you calculate it) but nailed a 31 this fall. They have very different lists, but we’re curious how they’ll end up in comparison. No matter how much people want to think this is a science, it definitely is not. We’re hoping D’s upward trend will matter to the more selective schools she’s applied to, but it’s out of our hands now. And the auditions - a total crapshoot.</p>
<p>Congrats to everyone whose kids got acceptances this week. Too many to acknowledge personally. </p>
<p>My only good news is that two of my sons schools acknowledged that his apps are complete.</p>
<p>AParentalUnit, Congrats to your S! That’s me, SU, College of Arts & Sciences, Class of 1975! Good choice! :)</p>
<p>SLUMOM - Glad you are happy with the choice you made then! </p>
<p>It’s been a stressful fall, worrying about apps and grades, but this thread has been excellent. Thanks everyone for the congrats, and I’ll be cheering everyone else on as well!</p>
<p>AParentalUnit - Congrats on son’s acceptance to Syracuse! My co-workers son graduated from there this Spring. He had a great experience and really got to know his Professors.</p>
<p>Has anyone gone to a school specific financial aid workshop? I’m going to one next week at one of the colleges that son has been accepted to and I don’t know quite what to expect, but it sounded interesting and it’s less then an hours drive so I thought I would go. Husband declined and I think son himself will be at a Robotics meeting. Frankly, I’m not sure why they focus this meeting on the students and not the parents. Are there really any 18 year old students that can afford to pay for a private college themselves?</p>
<p>I went to one at Bates they had on Open House day. nothing I didn’t already know. My son’s prep school has a college financial aid workshop which I found much more helpful.</p>
<p>I just wrote this on the Jewish B thread but thought I’d put if over here (in case there’s anyone who doesn’t read both!). Not that it’s so crucial, but because I think they’re talking about something that matters to all 3.Xers. The question came up about how hard kids need to work senior year to get the best grades possible. I wanted to share a little bit about the difference between my 4.0 and my 3.X Ds their senior years.</p>
<p>D1 was a top stat kid applying to high stat schools. At Christmas with the in-laws, she already had her ED acceptance to a top school, and was chatting with her cousins, who were at or applying to “regular” schools. My D was taking the most rigorous courseload possible and working to maintain her 4.0. The other kids were saying how senior year was “to have fun” and that they never would have taken so many hard classes or worried so much about grades.</p>
<p>These kids did fine and went to plenty nice schools. But it showed that only if you are aiming for the very top do you have to sweat that “keep it going until you drop” attitude. If you’re not 1st in your class, it really doesn’t matter if you’re 10th or 15th or 30th or whatever (top quarter is nice, and that’s 60 kids in my Ds’ school). It takes a lot of pressure off.</p>
<p>D2 is doing very well right now - even she can’t quite explain why things have fallen into place - but she also does not “need” to get all As this semester. First, she mathematically cannot change her GPA except for a few hundredths. Second, her batch of schools aren’t really going to care if she gets one B, or even 3 Bs. Some of that is because many of her classes are APs, and we figure they could weight them up. Could a few Bs nix her from a borderline acceptance at a reach? Sure. But she can’t really know or change that, and she has many schools that truly won’t care. So she’s finding a balance between “it’s senior year and have fun” and “I want to be as proud as I can of how I did.” </p>
<p>I guess this Christmas if the same conversation comes up, she’ll be sitting in the middle of the table. But I know she is happy. D1 was happy, too - but that’s because achieving as much as possible was what made her happy. Not everyone is like that.</p>
<p>I hope this might help any of us who are seeing bits of senioritis and wondering how we’ll deal with it. I’ll keep you posted on our end …</p>
<p>emmybet, you just described my two sons. S1 is a match for your D1, and he’s the one going through the process now. He’s been driven all his life – always academically ambitious and intellectually engaged just for the fun of it. S2, presently a freshman, is match for your D2 but he’s something his brother is not: extremely creatively driven. Has been writing short stories and poetry independently since third grade but doesn’t bust his butt academically. He’s why I’ve begun reading this thread in anticipation of what to expect three years hence when he’s a senior.</p>